by Nicole Thorn
I blinked at what I saw. It was another camp. Not like Athena’s, but clearly emulating hers. The biggest difference was the lack of demigods and warriors, and the obvious presence of monsters. They had a chimera pen, where a dozen of the animals fed on something meaty. I could hear some of them purring.
Gorgons patrolled the perimeter, and I started getting so sick of seeing them that I almost groaned. The fear of being turned to stone wasn’t as strong as it should have been.
There were some demigods, but not nearly as many as what Athena’s camp had. They trained with what appeared to be some werewolves, and what I swore were humans, until I saw a girl the size of a middle schooler pick a man twice her size up and throw him a dozen feet.
What the hell is going on?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:
I’ve Never Felt Like More of A Hooligan
Zander
I wished I could have turned around and taken everyone home, but that wasn’t an option at the moment. Instead, I had to stay and probably kill a bunch more people. Yay for me. Oh, and the icing on the cake was that my humans wouldn’t go home if I asked them to. They could be stubborn that way.
I turned, and looked at my little sister, already so fucking done with this. “Well?”
Kizzy had her bow over her body, but she had no arrow lined up. She crossed her arms, and cocked her hip out. “Why the hell would Arachne need a camp? Athena, Ares, Artemis, sure. Not this woman. Something is up.”
Clearly, but it we couldn’t ask Arachne what about her plan. I assumed it had something to do with Athena and some revenge that Arachne might’ve wanted. Turning people into things did make enemies. Not everyone could be as forgiving as Medusa. She was kinder than I could have ever expected her to be.
“It is,” Jasmine said, looking around at the fighters we barely hid from. “Who does that spider woman think she is? Just wrapping people up in webs, and then going off to make armies in her spare time.”
“Armies?” Jasper asked. “How do you know this is an army? This could be all the people she has on her side.”
His sister shrugged. “Is that not an army? Are the five of us not an army? It ain’t about the numbers, Jasper. It’s about the heart.”
I stuck my sword in the ground, and examined the little camp. It wanted to look as respectable as Athena’s did, but hadn’t gotten there yet. I didn’t think it would be all that hard, considering how determined Arachne seemed. If I had been her, I would have taken off. She got away with not looking like a spider, and she could have left and lived her life. Either she was totally nuts, or she wanted more than revenge. How far would any one person go for something so pointless? You couldn’t kill a god, and even destroying her camp didn’t do much more than irritate Athena. You couldn’t get revenge on someone who saw you as a bug. It didn’t mean anything to Athena.
“We can’t just leave,” I said grudgingly. “We have to destroy it. She’s got enough power here to do a lot of damage, and Arachne is gonna be pissed when she finds out we killed her wolves, and that we all survived. All we have is the fact that she doesn’t know as of yet. I don’t want to be home and unprepared when she decides to take care of us herself.”
Kizzy looked at Jasper with worry, and then back to me, communicating perfectly what I felt as well. Our humans faced danger in the camp, and we were kind of fucked.
So what did you do when you were stuck in a fight that you’d probably lose?
Arm yourself.
I smirked at Kizzy, and she looked even more concerned. “I have an idea.”
My sister made a face. “We’re gonna die today, aren’t we?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But we’ll go down swingin’.” I pulled my sword from the ground and put it over my shoulder.
Jasmine shuddered and grinned so wide that Jasper looked uncomfortable. This would be an interesting living situation now that I dated his sister. I could imagine him glaring at me for nine months while Jasmine was pregnant. He would probably try and kill me in the night, and then Jasmine would be sad. I didn’t want her to be sad, and I didn’t want to get murdered by my sister’s boyfriend. Kizzy would probably be kind of sad too.
Noticing Jasper’s unease, Kizzy put her arm around him, and rubbed his stomach as we walked. She smiled at him, and said something in his ear that I wished I didn’t hear. Damn superpowers. Why . . . why did she have to let him touch her? Was it too much to ask that my sister remain pure for her endless days?
I snuck everyone through the trees and behind the row of cabins that looked like they had been put up in two days flat. They probably wouldn’t last long. A few years at the most.
“What are we doing?” Jasmine whispered as she caught up to my side.
I smirked at her. “We’re gonna get you guys some weapons so that you don’t die.”
Her eyes lit up, and she had to contain a squee of approval. “Weapons! What do we get?”
“We’ll see.”
Juniper made a face, and shook her head.
The cabins had been labeled in Greek. That had been stupid and convenient for us, but also a bit telling. These people didn’t know where things belonged, so I wondered how new the camp was to them. Did the people here build it, or were they only training?
The weapons cabin sat on the far end and past all the ones for living. In the distance, the sound of swords clanging hard let us know that we wouldn’t be seen on this side. I might’ve been able to Charm my way out of something, but everyone reacted differently to that magic. I hadn’t gotten to try it on demigods before, and now wasn’t the time to find out it didn’t work.
The cabin had two entries; one in the back and one in the front. The back one had been locked. I took care of that with ease, breaking the knob off, and pushing it open. Jasmine quietly cleared her throat, and then touched my butt. I guess I did well. Jasper didn’t seem to agree.
We walked in after Kizzy made sure that no one waited inside. I walked behind her, and we stopped dead when we saw the glory of the armory. Sure, the weapons didn’t look all that nice, but they had a lot of them. Swords hung up on the wall, along with axes, maces, crossbows and arrows, all kinds of knives . . . Oh, this turned my new favorite place.
“Take what you want,” I said, “And we have to destroy the rest.” The words hurt to say, and I might have even winced.
The seers started perusing the weapons stash while Kizzy filled up on arrows, getting another quiver and adding it to her collection. She looked sadly at the weapons we would have to break, and stroked one of the daggers. Then she looked around suspiciously and stole it, tucking the thing into her boot.
Jasmine picked something for herself, going for daggers and loading up on them. Okay, well it was a bad time to get turned on, but she picked one up, and started admiring it. Huh, well, I didn’t think that would happen. Nor did I expect the tingles I got when she started putting knives in her shoes, and tucking them into pockets.
She caught me staring and smiled. “Yes, dear?”
I sighed. “I love you so much.”
Jasmine skipped over to kiss my cheek, and she put her hands on my chest. “I love you too, Zander. I look forward to kicking ass by your side.”
Gods, I didn’t want her there . . . So many things could’ve killed her, and she was so fragile. I didn’t tell her that.
“Me too,” I lied.
Jasper and Kizzy looked at weapons, trying to pick out something for him. His eyes landed on a head bashy thing that looked utterly nuts. It was long, and the end of it had a bunch of freaking spiky things on it. Jasper would mess some people up.
“Only the cudgel?” Kizzy asked him.
He shrugged and picked out a dagger. “A backup,” he said, tucking it into his pants, along with the sheath.
“Trouble picking?” I asked Juniper, who seemed lost.
She swallowed and look to me from the wall. “I don’t like fighting. I don’t want to stab someone and get all messy.” Juniper shook her head, and shudder
ed. “Bad, bad, bad.”
I turned to the crossbows and looked at them before I picked up a plain looking one. “This,” I said, showing it to her, “Takes utter precision, and control. You can attack from far away, and you won’t get any blood on you.”
I handed it to Juniper, and she took it without question, staring at it with admiration. “Precision,” she repeated, and looked up at me. “I have to aim and not miss.”
I nodded. “What do you think?”
Juniper ran her hands along the metal handle as she checked it out. “I think it’ll work.”
After Juniper got a couple of quivers together, we had the agony of destroying all these pretty things. Breaking arrows, cutting up the crossbow and normal bow strings, blunting daggers, and swords. I hated that . . . I broke as much as I possibly could with my extra strength, and then I mourned the death at my feet. If they had been better quality weapons, I would have been more upset. Like my sword, which I loved like my child. I didn’t bring my shield today, but that had probably been a good thing. I didn’t need one more thing to slow me down.
I looked at the people around me, weapons in hand, and armor on to keep them as safe as they could be. I still didn’t want them anywhere near the camp. So many things could go wrong, and I couldn’t be there to fix everything that happened. There were five of us . . .
“Are you guys ready for this?” I asked. “This is going to be . . . like a real battle I think. If this goes wrong, then I can’t save you.”
Kizzy got a funny look on her face before she spoke up. “Do we really need to fight?”
“I don’t want to,” I told her. “But we can’t let this place stand.”
“No,” she said with a smile. “We can’t. But there are a lot of options. I bet Arachne is somewhere around camp, just waiting for her wolves to come back. We find her, and we can end this whole thing.”
“Great,” Jasper said. “But how do we get to her? We can’t just go stomping around a camp filled with people.”
“No, but we can take it down piece by piece.” She looked to me. “You can Charm us up some help.”
If my powers worked, then I could do that. “How do we know who the Charm will work on?”
Kizzy took a few steps backward, and to the door we had come through. She popped it open, and smiled at something I couldn’t see until I moved to her side. A girl stood by the trees, wearing armor, and looking around nervously. Sweat covered her from what I assumed had been sparring session, and she didn’t notice us.
My sister looked at the tree above the girl, and the branches started growing. Over all the noise of the fighting, the girl didn’t seem to notice what probably sounded like the wind on leaves to her. Slowly, the branches surrounded her, and she would be left without any means of escape. They wrapped around the girl, taking her by instant surprise. Kizzy had the branch covering her mouth in the next second.
The five of us hurried to the girl before anyone could see us moving. I relied on the fact that these people may not have known all their fellow trainees, or that they at least expected new people to be coming in. With our weapons and our armor, we could’ve passed for one of them.
“Hello,” I said to the frightened girl, dropping into my Charm voice. “Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you.”
The girl began to settle, and I gestured for Kizzy to loosen up the branch around her mouth. The girl watched me with utter focus.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
Softly, she said, “Lizzy.”
“How old are you, Lizzy?”
“Fifteen.”
I exhaled, angry that Arachne would take a kid and throw her into this situation. “Why are you here today?”
“Training for Arachne.”
I hoped for more details than that, but this couldn’t have been too easy. “What are you training for?”
She wiggled her nose. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell us anything but that we belonged on her side.”
Her side?
“I want you to leave here,” I told her. “I’m going to have my sister let you go, and then you’re going to do me a favor, and run as far as you can. Until you get somewhere safe. Don’t let anyone keep you here.”
I told Kizzy to let the girl down, and she landed safely on her feet. Even with the Charm on her, Lizzy looked so frightened. She should’ve been, because she would only find death with Arachne.
“I need you to go and open the chimera pen in exactly fifteen minutes,” I told Lizzy. “Then you get out of here.”
The girl was already walking away when Jasmine tugged on my sleeve. “What!?! You want her to let those things go? They’ll kill us all.”
“Or, it’ll cause a lot of people to get distracted. They won’t be coming after us if they’re chasing after the chimeras. Then we can be free to look around for Arachne, wherever she’s hiding out.”
It would be awful if some of the younger fighters died today, but they chose to be with Arachne in her weird little camp. They knew what they got, stepping foot into this place. You went against the gods, and you died. Simple as that.
“What next?” Juniper asked. “You just gave us a time limit, so what do we do now?”
“Now, we get some friends to help us out.”
We trudged through the woods, keeping a lookout for campers. I had been able to charm the girl we just found, but I didn’t know how many others would fall for it. None of the gorgons, obviously, so those had to be avoided. They would need to be killed when we did find them.
I found another camper; a man this time, about six inches shorter than me. He almost blew this whole thing for us, sounding an alarm in between two cabins. I grabbed him by the throat and Charmed him into forgetting his voice for a few minutes.
“We need your help,” I said. “I’d like you to stay quiet, and follow along with us while we gather up more of you people.”
I released the man, and he didn’t fight me. He stayed a few feet behind us as we walked, and I did the same thing with several more of his buddies. I got a decent amount of people; enough to keep us alive should a battle break out. They would’ve been good shields, if nothing else. They acted like brain-dead robots, for all the care they had in their eyes.
We stopped when Juniper spotted a gorgon patrolling around the outskirts of the camp. She was alone, and I pushed back the campers and seers., Kizzy wouldn’t allow me to push her back. I tried telling her I would take care of it myself, but she just rolled her eyes.
Kizzy drew an arrow from her quiver, and took aim at the moving target. I almost didn’t know if she would be able to hit it. Sure enough, the arrow flew, and it stuck in the back of the neck of the unsuspecting gorgon. The woman went down almost soundlessly, but I could hear her snakes hissing as she flailed on the ground. One more arrow took care of it. The gorgon stilled, and so did her snakes.
Kizzy looked at me with utter cockiness, and I had to give it to her. “You did fine.”
She gasped. “I did wonderfully, jerk. I killed her from thirty feet away, with a weapon I’ve owned for only days. You couldn’t do any better if you tried.”
Jasmine smirked at her, putting her hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Zander just likes winning, even when he has no hope.”
I glared at her. “You wouldn’t know anything about winning, dear. I am the winner of this relationship.”
“Good way to go in,” Juniper muttered.
“You are not winning,” Jasmine told me. “I got you a giant teddy bear, and you love him, so I win.”
“Don’t bring Freddy Fazbear into this, Jasmine. He’s innocent. And I haven’t gotten my chance to romance you back. Just as soon as we get home, I am going to romance you so hard that you won’t be able to do anything but lay in a chocolate and love stupor.”
Jasmine scoffed. “Yeah right. I am going to romance you so hard, that you won’t even be able to spell the word anymore. You’ll be ashamed that a human destroyed you so good, and your mom will
honor my efforts.”
We went back and forth, and our siblings got even more uncomfortable as we did. But Jasmine needed to know this now, because she would only be sad later when she figured out that she couldn’t be me. I’d never had a girlfriend, and I intended on being the best boyfriend on the planet. She couldn’t stop me now.
“Guys,” Juniper said gently. “We are in the middle of a camp with a lot of enemies around us, and a bunch of chimeras are about to be let loose. I don’t really wanna get eaten today, so can we get a move on?”
I guess this needed to wait for a while, because I completely forgot about the chimeras. I lost track of the time. What if she got caught before she could do it, or if she hadn’t really been Charmed, and now she gathered people to come kill us? I remembered how much danger we faced, and how stupid this little fight had been.
“We should hurry,” I said, but a few seconds too late.
From a hundred feet away, something let out a sound almost like a roar. The ground shook under our feet, and people I couldn’t see screamed, yelling out orders in English and Greek as the chimeras ran around like crazy.
We had moments before we had chimeras running around, gorgons sent to stop them and us, and the rest of the camp finding out about us.
Should be fun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:
Athena Enjoyed That Too Much . . .
Jasmine
People smiling creepily surrounded us, and looked at Zander like he was their god, instead of only half a god. It was possibly the most disturbing thing I’d seen, and I had to watch him get covered in spiders, with all those legs and teeth on him, in him . . . I’d never sleep after this, ever again.
“What do we do now?” Juniper asked. She held her crossbow to her chest tightly, like she worried it would do something she didn’t want it to if she looked away from it. I mean, you never knew with weapons. It looked mundane, but so did my fish before he grew a second head.
“Do we attack the chimeras?” one of the Charmed people asked in an almost drugged like way. His body swayed toward Zander. I put my hand on his chest, and nudged him back.